If you are a budding entrepreneur with a great business idea you will quickly run into a barrage of suggestions and /or requests for a BUSINESS PLAN. The next thing you will discover is that this entails a huge amount of information seeking, fact gathering, creative thinking and skilled writing. All this is over-and-above what you are already convinced is a “great business idea” that you have studied exhaustively, can talk about endlessly and are ready to stake your future on. So what is a business plan?

First it is a management tool that documents your business’s objectives and how they will be attained though specific time periods. This entails the type of business activity you will engage in, the uniqueness of your products and services, markets to be served, competitive advantages, management capabilities, project costs and key time frames.

Next it is written documentation of who you are, what you plan to achieve, the location of your business, when you expect to get started and how you will overcome the risks involved and provide the returns anticipated. This should provide the reader with a good insight into where you are coming from with your ideas and what makes you think you are right. Then you will need to show what numbers you have to back you up. This requires financial information properly prepared and attested to with reasonable time frames and believable assumptions arrived at.

The next question that hits you between the eyes is who should prepare this Business Plan and when do I need it? A large part of the answer to that question is addressed in a video by Business Plans Canada at their website www.businessplanscanada.com.